Thanks to recent research, we have come to see narratives of Islamic origins as a palimpsest of literary and historiographical layers from late antiquity. Whether in the life of the Prophet, accounts of the Arab conquests, or biographies of the Companions (sāhaba), we can detect the watermark of Christian and Jewish traditions in the earliest drafts of Muslim history. This applies not only to the content of these drafts, but also to their style and manner of depiction.

Demonstrating concrete relationships between these traditions, however, can prove tricky. The sources connecting late antiquity and early Islam lie scattered across a vast geographic and chronological field. Moreover, impressions of similarity often reflect the shared literary and cultural heritage of Christian and Muslim authors, but not necessarily direct contact between them. That said, parallelism between certain stories can sometimes be too striking to ignore. One such case is the similarity between early Islamic and late antique Christian legends about the origins of monasticism. Tracking their connections will take us from southern Gaul in the fifth century to Baghdad in the tenth. Along the way, we will examine the wider process of exchange between late antique and early Islamic sources, in particular how Muslim authors adapted existing Christian material to tell new origin legends. This will provide a vantage for unwinding the complicated views of early Muslims towards monasticism specifically, as well as towards Christianity more generally.

14.2 Views of Monasticism in Early Islamic Culture

The Qur’ān mentions monks (rāhib, pl. rāhban) and monasticism (rah- bānīya) several times, though its message is not always clear. With the help of medieval tafsīr (scriptural exegesis), we see the Qur’ānic monk as both a hero and a villain: a loyal follower of Jesus and Muhammad, but also a perverte! of “true Christianity”. Monks play a prominent role in the biography of the Prophet. In a famous scene from the Stra of Ibn Ishaq (d. 150/767), Muhammad is said to have met a monk named BahTra during a childhood visit to Busra in southern Syria. The monk predicted the boy would one day become a great prophet, an act which was later interpreted as placing a Christian imprimatur on the new Muslim faith.